Tuesday, April 27, 2004  

"Everyone will forget soon / The fourth man on the moon"

Hefner, "Alan Bean"
from Dead Media (Too Pure, 2001) and Alan Bean EP
The French, "Gabriel in the Airport"
from Local Information (Too Pure, 2003)

When Hefner was an indie-rock band, I didn't really like them. I appreciated Darren Hayman's smart / sarcastic lyrics about modern love and city life, but the band's music was rote guitar-bass-drums shamble-pop. I kept thinking that Hefner was Perfect Disaster with better words and worse grooves (i.e., not enough well-executed Velvet Underground licks).

But when Hefner ditched their axes for vintage synths---about 10 years after everyone else bought them up---I became obsessed with the band. Well, at least with Dead Media, the one album Hefner cut before disbanding in order for Hayman and bassist John Morrison to form The French (which sounds just like Dead Media-era Hefner). I've come to appreciate Hefner's other albums, but nothing they did tops their last LP.

"Alan Bean" is a damn great single from the thoroughly perfect Dead Media. The tune is all about the fourth man on the moon--Apollo 12's lunar module pilot---and how he can't top such an awesome experience. Yet Bean has a whole life to live still (he was only 37 when he moonwalked), so how does he deal with the fact that the greatest moment in his life is behind him? He paints space scenes---only space scenes---trying to recapture the moment when he had his greatest triumph in life. Such a great lyric topic---friggin' a, this song kills me.

The French's "Gabriel in the Airport" is a bitterly funny smack on rich do-gooders like Petey G (aka "that Phil Collins guy," as the song says). "Don't you wish that you could say / You never thought of Kate Bush in a dirty way?"

The French have a nutz&boltz site, and there you can download the MP3 for another GREAT tune, "The Wu-Tang Clan," which is all about a girl who listens to RZA and the gang and feels alive for the very first time. (Too Pure also has a mini-site for the band.)

Though Hefner is done, their site is still up, and it has a fab new discography for the group with anotations for each song. The band released a ton of singles and five albums, and Hayman did the covers for all of them. He's a damn tite graphic designer and artist. He and Alan Bean should collaborate on an action portrait of me in a space suit because you know I'd rock that bubble helmet like nobody's biznezz.

Posted by CP | Link |

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